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Robert B. Stinnett, World War II Pacific US Navy veteran and author of Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor, discusses the treason of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in approving a policy to force Japan into striking first and deliberately allowing their navy to strike ours at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

Robert B. Stinnett is a Media Fellow at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California, and author of George Bush: The War Years and Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor. See the Independent Institute’s Pearl Harbor resources page here.

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Mind if we translate this into Japanese?? I am an American living in Japan. I would love to write this up for the Japanese to read.

By the way AINJINs meanss mistress or secret lover. They probably meant Gainjins which means foreigners (in a rude way Gaikoko-jin is the proper way). It is pronounced like the English words “Guy Jean” and the S is not necessary to make it plural.

It’s a minor point. This was a great interview as always. There were so many smoking guns revealed in this interview. By the way not only was their an embargo on oil and a known coming attack to Hawaii. They didn’t just move the modern ships out of the Harbor. The US federal Reserve had finacially backed the Chinese and covert operations from the OSS had been attcking the Japanese army in East China at least 42 days before Pearl Harbor.

Also another smoking gun is that they had begun drafting Native Americans (Dine, Hoppi, and Zuni)for the war (and lied to some of them putting them on a bus said to go to a “language school”) before the attack on Hawaii.

I’m going to listen later, but something jumps out at me as being completely out of bounds.

Those poor Japanese – they have no free will, they are just puppets so FDR could pull strings and have them attack us.

“… approving a policy to force Japan into striking first…”

People and nations do provocative things all the time. We still have free will. If someone insults me, or does something annoying or inconvenient, I don’t have the right to use violence.

We FORCED them to do nothing. No more than we forced the hijackers to run planes into the WTC and Pentagon.

Every individual and nation is given the choice to escalate or deescalate.

And Japan was conducting a war. If we didn’t want to trade with them while they were doing things like the rape of NanKing, I think it would be reasonable. Would they have needed the oil and the rest if they weren’t at war? War makes people stupid as recent history shows. Japanese included. But that is different than forcing someone.

Robert Stinnett’s book â€” and his primary research upon which his book is based â€” is a major achievement in getting to the truth about World War II. U.S. Navy code-breaking of Japanese communications, combined with ULTRA, the British program that decoded German ciphers throughout the war, provided the Allies with a stupendous advantage over the Axis â€” which never suspected their enemy knew what they were going to do before they did it.

Of course we won WW II. This revelation does not negate the other things that were required to win.

Yet, this huge intelligence advantage may be the main reason the Allies won in 1945: we have never enjoyed such an advantage since and we have not won a war in the past sixty-two years.

By the time America entered the war in Dec 1941 the situation was very different from June-July 1940. Britain had strengthened its defenses. The Italian empire in North Africa had collapsed. The Balkans had become a quagmire for Germany. Operaton Barbarossa had clearly failed. The Germans had sustained 800,000 casulaties (almost 25% of invasion force), were being thrown back everywhere by a massive Soviet counterattack and were caught unprepared for the 41-42 winter the worst in a century. The situation had already turned. All America needed was to continue it’s lendlease program for the U.K. and possibly the USSSR. American military intervention was unneccesarry and may have prolonged the war with it’s “unconditional surrender” policy.

One of most misunderstgood myths of World War 2 is Churchiil died a very frustrated man because his leding agenda was saving his empire which he lived long enough to see its demise; the war against Germany came second. Hitler was the unfortunate by-product of World War 2 and the punitive Versailles Treaty which the victorious allies forced upon the defeated Germany and the Central Powers. The greatest economist of the past century was John Maynard Keynes who was a delegate to the treaty. Upon discovering what the victors intended to impose upon defeated Germany he resigned returning home to presciently forecast there would be another war in Europe. Even Eisenhower’s mentor and best friend, Gen. Fox Connor, told Ike to not fret over the slow pace of promotions in a peacetime army as the Versailles Treat guaranteed another war would happen and Ike would be one of the leaders in that war. In fact, Ike’s graduation class at West Point is still called “The class the stars fell on.”

It sure makes one wonder if something similar happened on 9-11: the Bush administration having fully understood the warnings about an impending al-Qaeda attack, choose to stand down, perhaps even ordered stand-downs to allow it to proceed. Hopefully it won’t take 60+ years to discover the whole truth.

It is so called as it was authored by Lt. Cmder. Arthur McCollum, USN (Office of Naval Intelligence) some time prior to the Pearl Harbor attack. It spells out an 8-point plan of action against the Japanese. In addition to the trade embargo (which in the relations of nation-states is usually considered an act of war), it also detailed the US policy of a military build-up in the Far East with the use of British and Dutch bases in that part of the world. (Funny, no mention of moral outrage over the “rape of Nanking” anywhere in that document.)

If someone has you trapped in a corner and they have a great big club in their hands, it would be awfully disingenous for them to claim that you could have made a different choice if you lash out at them in order to get out of that corner.

Pay particular attention to the concluding point of that memo: “If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better. At all events we must be fully prepared to accept the threat of war.” So much the better? Better for whom, exactly?

Why did the US gov’t want to provoke the Japanese? The reason permeates most of the memo: To get into the war in Europe.

I usually stay away from Pearl Harbor conspiracy analyses – I tend not to believe in conspiratorial theories of history because: (1) People tend to believe them for “wish-fulfilling” reasons and (2) many such historical interpretations have a paranoid’s conception of the omnipotence of satanic leaders or other historical “grey eminences” who, conspiracy theorists would have us believe, have been the “hidden hands” behind major historical events.

I think such analyses go against a deterministic approach to history which I value, and which I first found very eloquently presented some of the chapters of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” In sum, Tolstoy held – rightly I believe – that in history, leaders (in Tolstoy’s example, Napoleon) are as much led on by events as they lead their followers.

In the case of Pearl Harbor, I would say that from what I’ve heard and read of Robert Stinnett’s account of FDR’s involvement, that his account is “suggestive” but that he would have us believe that it is conclusive – and it isn’t. His account, in other words, lacks the tentativeness toward historical truth that I associate with first-class historical writing.

I urge anyone looking into this subject to read the playright Robert E. Sherwood’s account of the reactions of Roosevelt’s closest aides to the Pearl attack in Sherwood’s highly readable (though not, perhapse, “conclusive” or “definitive”) two volume memoir in his “Roosevelt and Hopkins,” which Sherwood wrote in the years right after FDR’s death.

In the book, Sherwood intimates that FDR very much sought Japanese aggression against us in the Pacific – perhaps at the Philippines or Wake Island, far from Hawaii, not Pearl Harbor – for these reasons: because(1) the Japanese wanted war with us no matter what (I believe this not just on Sherwood’s say-so, but by dint of having read many different accounts of the way in which Japanese warlords conducted themselves from the late 19820s onward) and because (2)of the Roosevelt Administration’s concern (valid and plausible, to me) was that the Japanese would strike first at such relatively undefended European colonial possessions such as present-day Indonesia or Malaysia – and after biding their time, gaining staging areas for attacks on Australia and also the natural resources (oil, rubber plantations) these possessions held with which they could augment their forces – not to mention new subject populations they could use to further build their military might in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

I don’t consider Sherwood’s two volumes conclusive either — it is a political book, like Robert Stinnett’s, after all – but I cannot see that Sherwood, a gifted writer with his own interests outside of politics – his political career, after all, ended with FDR’s death– would labor so hard on those two very readable, intelligent volumes merely with the ulterior motive of saving the reputations of Hopkins and Roosevelt and other New Deal advisors – whose fate in history could not be of urgent interest to him personally – by means of a false account meant to cover up putative “criminality” or “treason” on the part of FDR and his advisors.

Sherwood plainly says that Roosevelt and his advisors felt relief at the Pearl Attack only because such the attack would lose for the Japanese the advantages mentioned in the paragraph above. But they were stunned at it (by Sherwood’s account) because no one thought that the Japanese could strike the U.S. so close to the mainland.

It is important too, to remember, that the Pearl Harbor attacks, like the September 11 attacks, were a first – until September 11, no one had ever mounted an attack meant to provoke an entire nation by plowing aircraft into major symbolic buildings in a suicide attack.

And, so far as I know – I’d be glad to be corrected here – no nation, until Pearl Harbor, had ever mounted such a massive attack by aircraft carrier with so many aircraft accross more than 200 miles of open ocean, by stealth and with no warning, against another nation.

Also, many Western military commanders of the late 30s and early 1940s had a low regard for the Japanese navy, rating it on a par with the naval prowess of Italy – which is so say not very highly (no insult to Italian-Americans meant – I’m one myself!).

To me it seems prepostrous that FDR and his advisors would run the risk of exposure by people in the chain of command by deliberately leaving Pearl Harbor open to attack. And there would always the danger that an attack against a U.S. possession regarded even then by many Americans as part of the U.S. not a mere possession, would have exactly the opposite effect it did in fact have – in other words, there would be the risk – one no politician, no matter how Macchiavellian – would take – that the U.S. public would turn against FDR’s administration in a fury and demand impeachment or worse, for reasons of gross incompetence.

But my mind is not made up on this and thanks to antiwar.com for these two interviews with Robert Stinnet, so that I can re-visit this subject.

excellent interview. stinnet has laid out more facts bare and plain than i’ve ever heard before on this subject. it is quite clear that FDR wanted to get into the war, and goaded japan into it. nice to know some more of the details.

with regard to the article, the biggest issue where i split with the (what i’m guessing) is the rothbard libertarians, is when you start looking at the so-called ‘just war’ of wwii, there’s alot of factors to show that, even though manipulation was going on (as it seems to go on in the run-ups to every war), it was, in effect the Right thing to do. stinnet says as much, citing Germany as the real threat here.

every time i try to replay a scenario in my head where the US didn’t go into wwii and left europe to the tender mercies of the nazi regime against britain and russia and japan in the far east, i come up with a world i would rather not see. i have a very hard time believing that the defeat of germany would have been possible with just british influence and manpower alone. without a western front to slow them down, germany could have had a better shot at conquering russia, although granted, by 1944 germany was firmly on the retreat from russia back to eastern europe. the entry of the US in africa, italy, and france, however, provided a number of fronts that served to hasten the end of the war. and could british air power alone have been able to damage german industry to slow delivery of supplies to the fronts?
if the US had not entered the war the japanese would have been free at that point – assuming they didn’t attack the US – to open up a second front in russia – though japan tended to be pragmatic in its conquests and a case could be made that japan might not venture that far north just to expand the Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.

but germany would certainly have been able to use a larger amount of manpower if no other fronts opened in western europe, at the very least staving off the end for a few more years. leaving aside the question of the holocaust, it is well known that they had developed probably the best jet fighter, a craft that was able to outfly any propeller driven plane at the time. id imagine that there would have been a lot more of these in the skies, easily shooting down bombers and possibly fighting the soviets to a standstill in the air.

in short, one could make a case that without the US intervention, germany would have conquered all of europe, reduced the soviets to a mere shell, conquered or at least contained the brits, and left japan to wreak whatever havoc it wanted in the Far East on british, dutch, and french possesions (which, with the exception of india and parts of china it essentially succeeded doing, anyway – without the US, india would have been conquered).

so at that point we’d be hopefully making piece with germany and japan, creating in essence a triumvirate of powers running most of the world. but the philosophy behind german superiority – the genetic superiority of the master race – the disregard for any others as ‘untermenschen’, plus the SS and the new order executing jews, gays and any other degenerates they’d find – as i said before, not a world i’d want to live in.

so what i need is some convincing. leave out the versailles treaty, as we know the odiousness of that war debt was a huge contributing factor to ww II. show me some decent book, or some research that justifies a purist libertarian position starting around the 1920’s and 1930’s. we know isolationism was running at very high levels then, so assume it continued and FDR didn’t want to start a war or get into a war. we don’t even do the lend- lease act or prevent the japanese from getting steel from us or embargo them. run the wwII scenario and then tell me that somehow the US and the world would be a better place, and germany would get defeated anyway. i don’t think it can be done.

every war before or since has to me seemed uneccessary, avoidable, but this one sticks out as the exception. i’d like to know what others think.

But this was misguided. What if Germany and Italy had not OBLIGED Roosevelt by declaring war? America would have found itself fighting only a Pacific and Asian war. Indeed Hitler might have been better off because the American public might have demanded the suspension of Lendlease to help their troops more. Pearl Harbor only ensured war with Japan. It was a misguided strategy.

He wanted to preserve the Empire. But he was also a very strong advocate of war with Germany in both wars. Britain could only be an Imperial power or an European one not both. He never made this realization.

The establishment view invariably supports the view of the establishment â€” which is the most that can be said for it. Honest history corrects mistakes and false impressions created by dishonest people. Thank God for honest people like Robert Stinnett.

I don’t see any scenario under which Germany could have defeated the USSR unless they had advocated a counter-revolution against Stalin’s regime. Given the racial policies of the Nazi regime this seems inconceivable to me. The Germans never even got close to the “A-A” line which wouldn’t have ended Soviet resistance. I think the USSR would have defeated the Germans all by itself without any help at all from anyone. It would have taken longer and been bloodier but that’s my view.

Signed by all 3 nations in 1940, it explicitly stated that if one of the countries was attacked by another power within the following decade, the other 2 would pledge any political, economic or military support necessary to that country.

Now, Japan directly attacked the U.S., not the other way ’round. But once Japan attacked at Pearl Harbor, one can safely assume that Hitler knew full well that Roosevelt would retaliate against Imperial Japan. FDR had already been engaged in a military build-up for sometime before Pearl was even attacked (indeed, the US was already providing military support to Britain).

So Hitler and Mussolini just went ahead and did what they knew the Japanese would eventually require them to do anyway under the terms of the pact. And remember, as I said in my earlier post, trade embargoes are quite frequently understood between states as acts of hostility, and FDR’s trade embargo had begun before Pearl Harbor. So in the views of the other Axis countries, they could have interpreted events such that actually the US had initiated hostilities against Japan first, and that Pearl was the righteous response by the Japanese. Certainly, that’s how the Japanese would have presented it to Germany and Italy, and those 2 governments would have been hard pressed had they begged to differ.

And also, seeing as how the US was an indispensable ally of their enemy the Brits, from Germany and Italy’s P.O.V. a US-dominated Far East would have been every bit as intolerable to them as a Japanese-dominated Far East was to the US and Britain (and Russia). So the other 2 Axis powers probably reasoned that they had to take “pre-emptive” action (sound familiar?) to try and prevent that.

No, provoking a Japanese attack in order to get into the war was a very shrewd strategy. (Of course, as I already said, the US had ALREADY been involved in the war to a degree on behalf of Britain, but an attack by the Japanese went a long toward silencing any anti-war dissent in this country, and FDR could claim a pretext for going forward full throttle.)

I have little doubt about Stinnet’s major point, that FDR encouraged the Japanese attack and actively allowed it to occur. Having said that, Stinnet’s other book was about George H.W. Bush in WWII. Put another way, he has a connection to the Bush family. Day of Deceit was published in 2000. The purpose of Day of Deceit was to explain exactly what was meant by “another Pearl Harbor” in the Project for a New American Century’s report.

I’m sorry but you are quite wrong. Neither Italy or Germany was obligated to declare war on America based on any articles in the treaty. And I don’t see how America could havee declared war on them. Once the Pacific conflict picked up steam and took on a life of it’s own it is very unlikely the American public would havee supported a separate European war.

If the US and UK had not supplied Stalin with TONS of materiel and so on, and also not ganged up on Germany, Germany would have carved out her Empire to the East as desired, WW II would not have happened and the world would be a perfectly fine place today since Hitler/Germany never made any attempt to make France German and also allowed the British troups to return home at Dunkirk because he NEVER had any designs to conquer the Western World as our propagandists successfully persuaded us was the case.

Rather, Britain lost her Empire, Russia took over half of Europe, Germany was hollowed out (to this day), and a US-led international-banker led oligarchy has ruled the world ever since and is about to plunge it into dysfunction since the endless-profits-for-the-ruling-classes model simply is not sustainable in any system, climate, political configuration or long-term time-frame.

Some very intelligent remarks above but to all who have not read Stinnett’s book – which I have a few years ago: read it. It is boring, hard to plough through, but precisely because it is laden with hard-core indisputable facts, such as transcripts of radio intercepts showing that the US was aware of the fleet’s departure and destination and so forth.

The argument about whether or not it was for a nobler cause that such a deception was made is, ultimately, irrelevant since the fact that they had to use such an argument already ‘proves’, in some sense, that they could not have justified entering the World War without such childish, propaganda-driven reasons.

Exactly the same as 9/11, clearly. Although most US citizens simply refuse to admit the obvious because it makes everyday life too uncomfortable in that facing up to the deep hypocrisies, including mass murder, done in our name for so-called ‘noble’ reasons, is a total sham. That’s why Stinnett’s thesis will be denied or ignored. And that’s why a new World War is likely with again millions of ordinary people who have no axe to grind sacrificing their wellbeing and lives on the altar of a ruling elite class whose only interest is profits and remaining as an elite.

America cynically helped engineer and profited from a World War shamelessly sacrificing hundreds of thousands of young lives in order to fatten up its already fat cats. That’s the true story.

Zhu: you might be right, although I suspect that conflict might have remained contained between those two powers and not escalated world wide – unless again the US had chosen to go in. That is unlikely since one of the conditions Roosevelt laid down for helping the UK was that she remove many of the tariff controls in her colonial spheres of interest and thereby allow the US to muscle in on those world markets. Without that deal, there would have been far less incentive for the US to make determined inroads into the Pacific/Oriental sphere. Britain’s concern with maintaining her international hegemony in trading terms largely determined her various containment and/or divide-and-conquer strategies on the European mainland.

Still one has to wonder and further explore: what exactly was the point in the West funding the great Bolshevik revolution and then further supporting Stalin’s drive to take over the West? Stalin had over a million paratroopers massed and due to take off barely 2 weeks after the Germans preemptively invaded. Paratroopers serve no defensive function whatsoever. Why were the banking classes supporting all this? My best guess is that it was a way for them to wipe out the old, entrenched orders in central Europe, many in place essentially since the days of the Roman Empire in one form or another, and then be able to start fresh with their Jewish-British-American-French banking elites sitting on top of the New World Order, with communism just the religious opiate needed to justify the whole thing ideologically – for the Russians at least – whereas in fact it would simply be a fascist operation much as Stalin’s Russia was much more fascist, or at least controlled, than truly communist.

Roosevelt forbade the Poles to accept Hitler’s Danzig corridor suggestions, which were essentially workable, open, monitorable and so forth and meanwhile US banking interests were helping to fund Russia’s buildup. There is little question that Roosevelt – and the many Jewish-Soviet agents in his administration – were pro-actively involved in many of the dynamics that pressure-cooked Europe into a region-wide war. My best guess on this is explained above in terms of pushing for far wider spheres of influence for American elites in terms of world trade and the financial system. If you like, a play to make NYC the centre of world finance rather than London.

The most valuable lesson about Pearl Harbour I think is simply that one should never take government propaganda at face value because it is demonstrably true, despite all protestations to the contrary, that large-scale conspiracies involving hundreds, if not thousands, can actually be pulled off (the favorite argument thrown at so-called conspiracy theorists). They have been pulled off many times in the past, and will again in the future, just as we are going through a huge whopper right now in the so-called War on Terror against world-threatening Islamofascism which is as much a threat to the American Homeland as was Hitler’s Germany – i.e. not at all.

OK, it would appear factual that the US slaughtered its own troops in order to bring the public on board for WWII. In short PH was an inside job. The why of this treasonous plot was not addressed in depth in this interview.

When the PNAC stated a “new Pearl Harbor” would be necessary, this is exactly what they meant. A false flag operation intended to stampede the public into accepting the unacceptable.

A Corporate conspiracy to overthrow our Constitution to enable economic rape and pillage, free from the constraints of law. They were abetted by a loose coalition of criminal elements in states such as
Pakistan,Israel,Britain,Italy, Spain,Saudi Arabia,Turkey,the Gulf States,Australia,Canada and non state players like drug traffickers and gun runners.

Mostly, i see Israeli Zionists as the prime mover in this conspiracy. They have infiltrated our government and media at the highest levels and are so powerful that no congressperson will cross them.
One of the most interesting is Dov Zakheim, a dual citizen who controlled the Pentagon budget from which 3 Trillion dollars went missing. His other job was on the board of a company (SPC International) that made remote control technology for aircraft. Just one of the hundreds of little coincidences that make a logical person ask, WTF.

“In the document called “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” published by The American Enterprise’s “Project for a New American Century”, SPC International executive, Dov Zakheim, called for a ‘Pearl Harbor’ type of incident being necessary to foster the frame of mind needed for the American public to support a war in the Middle East that would politically and culturally reshape the region. A respected and established voice in the intelligence community, his views were eagerly accepted, and Dov went from his position at Systems Planning Corporation to become the Comptroller of the Pentagon in May 2001. Tridata, a subsidiary of Systems Planning Corporation, was in charge of the investigation after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.”

Scott Horton thinks problems like these with the official 911 story are unimportant. Conspiracy kooks cherry pick these loose ends just like neo-cons do when furthering their agenda. He apparently believes our government would never do such a horrible thing to its own citizens. To ask questions about 911 is to display ones laughable ignorance, in fact in Scott’s mind only an idiot would entertain such delusions.

…In regard to The Treachery of The Roosevelt Administration’s allowing the attack on Pearl Harbor. I believe it was Winston Churchill who once remarked that: “On occasion a man will happen to stumble across the truth. He then picks himself up, brushes it from his clothes…and continues walking.” Truer words were never spoken. Thus if Mr. Stinnett’s work is a revolation for some. They may care to add the late John Toland’s 1982 treatise on the events leading to, and the execution of the Japanese attack. Toland’s comprehensive effort is accurately titled: “Infamy”…and trust me, it was Infamy indeed…Example? Navy crewman trapped aboard the capsized USS Oklahoma, were said to have been heard pounding on the ship’s bulkheads and compartments below, until Xmas.

…Al…Dude…No offense, in fact I think your objectivity is as salient as it is direct. Nonetheless: In a Political context? You’re throwing up way too much flak, way too soon. You don’t wanna shoot your barrel smooth.

There are many annoying aspects about this era and the Japanese attacks on Dec. 7, 1941. I thing I found annoying when visiting England was hearing many people there throwing it up in the faces of all Americans “You only joined in the war because of the attack on Pearl Harbor.” Actually, it was impossible to stay out of intervening considering the activities of Churchill and FDR to get the U.S. involved. Churchill could not keep this quiet because after they got the U.S. into the war he boasted of his efforts. Actually, I often wonder why Japan never attacked a year earlier when you consider the insulting notes and demands Washington was sending Tokyo. FDR’s successful tactics were so successful that they have been duplicated several times since to get us into the Vietnam War and into both wars against Iraq. Remembering that FDR was confronted with a congress and public 80% against intervening in the European War. But if a leader is determined to wage war nothing will stop them be it our Constitution, congress or public opinion. Hollywood played large pro-war role in 1940 and that should not forgotten. Steve, USN, WW2

Richard J. Maybury’s book World War II offers a lot of information about the “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor, and the myth that Germany would have “taken over the world” if the USA had not entered the war.